Chapter 25

‘There’s someone new at the house.’

‘Good. Movement.’ Boss Man, on the phone, was even more abbreviated than in person.

‘He showed up in a Shelby Mustang, the ’67, a beaut,’ William said. ‘It’s got that wide grille, makes her look like she’s scowlin’ at you.’

He sank to the bed, freeing a cloud of dust from the threadbare blanket. Hanley sat opposite, a mirror image, their knees nearly touching. The motel room’s lights were off, but the blinking FIVE ADULT CHANNELS!! sign outside threw a neon glow through the curtains, lighting up patches of their faces, their bodies, the dreary furnishings. Dodge was on the floor by the bathroom, his back to the wall, flipping through one of his comics, some violent tale featuring a guy with jester tattoos on either shoulder. The bathroom door was slivered open behind him, a fall of light laid across the open pages. The stink of mildew hung in the air.

‘When did he get there?’ Boss Man asked.

‘We picked up on him this afternoon, but he may have come in earlier.’

‘He’s formidable,’ Boss Man said.

‘Yes.’

‘We’ll see about that. How’d it go with our estate executor?’

‘Wingate didn’t bite.’

‘I figured. We need confirmation on this soon, before it gets out of hand.’

William could hear the whistle of his breathing through his nose.

‘What’s he doing?’ Boss Man continued. ‘This new fella.’

‘Switching locks. Checking the fences. Looks like they’re waiting.’

‘For what?’

‘Us.’

Boss Man said, ‘Name.’ A request, not a question.

‘Don’t have one yet,’ William said. ‘We ran the plates this afternoon, came back fake.’

‘How ’bout that.’

‘But Hanley went back and pulled the VIN off the dashboard, so we can check on that tomorrow.’ William nodded reassuringly at his brother. ‘He’s been doing good work on this, Hanley. Helping us achieve the mission directive.’

‘What’s the VIN?’

William told him the number.

‘I’m not waiting until tomorrow. I’ll have someone handle it now.’

Click.

William said, to the dead line, ‘Okay, I’ll be sure to do that, sir.’ He clicked the cell shut and said to Hanley, ‘He says you’re doing good.’

‘He did? What’d he say?’

‘That you’re doing good.’

Dodge made a noise. William figured him for amused, though whether by the comic book or the conversation he didn’t know. He and Dodge got on so well because they never tried to figure each other out. William’s talents were a complement to Dodge’s – mouth and muscle, two interlocking pieces that formed a perfect whole. When Dodge was serving a nickel in Pelican Bay on a battery-assault beef, he’d celled with William’s uncle. ‘When Dodge bumps you,’ Uncle Len had said, ‘it’s like you’re eight years old and he’s a Buick.’ Uncle Len had been impressed, and that was saying something. He was the one who had started it all, who had introduced William to his distinct philosophy of brutality. Even on his deathbed in the prison infirmary, Uncle Len had held to his code. And passed on his obligations. ‘Burrells see to their commitments,’ he’d told William on visiting day. ‘But I’m leaving a piece of unfinished business. Only thing I didn’t get done.’ He’d hacked a few times and spit green into a bedpan. ‘One job. The Job.’ William’s only birthright, aside from cerebral palsy and Uncle Len’s shattered pocketwatch, had been to complete the task.

Dodge had gotten out a year later, around the time William’s osteoporosis had kicked in, his increasing fragility threatening to sideline him. With mounting medical bills, William couldn’t afford to be sidelined. A team-up was in order. When he’d brought Dodge onto Boss Man’s payroll, Dodge was happy for the work. He’d appeared at the clapboard house William and Hanley had moved into after their grandmother passed, and taken up on a mattress in the cellar, where he read his graphic novels and meditated in thunderous silence. He had a sick mom in a home somewhere – or maybe an aunt who’d raised him – and all his cash went to that. Dodge wasn’t about the money, though. He was about the work. William suspected he wouldn’t know how to spend a hundred bucks at one time unless he was buying implements. Him and that ball peen. He liked the hammer because he could work for a long time and keep someone conscious. It seemed a good fit for his patience, his deliberateness. William always figured you could read a man by his choice of weapon. Rash, sharp, and to the point, Hanley preferred a knife. As for William, the only weapons he used these days were his words.

The Morse-code flicker of the motel neon was starting to get to him. William leaned over and used a knuckle to work the stiff muscle of his left thigh. If his legs stiffened too much, they’d scissor when he lay down. The pain was so exquisite they even had a name for it: high-tone, like the record company.

He’d learned to live with pain from a young age. Maybe that’s why he was such an expert in its application. He’d walked on his knees at first, until a staph infection over one cap forced him upright. By four he’d figured out a gait that didn’t require braces. His first memory was shuffling down the shag-carpeted hall, Hanley doing an infant crawl at his side so he could lean into him when he got wobbly. Despite his test scores, William’s kindergarten teacher thought he was retarded, because of his loose articulation. During his second hospital stay for pneumonia, his nurse had gotten him speech therapy to help pass the endless bedridden hours. Even as a seven-year-old, he’d known he would be grateful to her for the rest of his life. He spent his time reading dime novels about soldiers and war heroes, fetishizing a military that would never have him. He loved the muscular heroics and derring-do, G.I. Joes charging into the fray, strong of back and square of jaw, their ramrod postures unbending in the face of fair-haired krauts, underhanded Japs, or jungle gooks. When William was discharged, he learned that his parents had moved into a fourth-floor apartment in a complex with no elevator. It didn’t take him long to wind up in a boys’ home, Hanley following shortly after in solidarity.

William clutched the sheet as a wave of spasticity rippled over him like a prolonged sneeze. The toughest part about cerebral palsy was its unpredictability. Some nights he’d go to bed tight and wake up feeling athlete-strong. Other times he’d be sailing through weeks without symptoms and drop off the cliff, a period of exacerbation coming on fast and hard without warning.

Like right now.

‘Dodge’ – his voice box felt locked down – ‘can you give me a minute alone?’

Dodge stood and walked out. His footsteps clopped down the outdoor hall, and then a door opened and closed.

William flopped back on the mattress, stared at the ceiling, and emitted a low-throated groan.

Hanley said, ‘What do you need?’

‘The baclofen. It’s in my bag.’ William tilted his head forward when his brother approached, and popped the muscle relaxant dry. It tasted bitter as sin, but it gave him no bad side effects like the Dilantin he took to prevent seizures, which made his eyes jerk like a fun-house effect. He held on as another spasm worked its way through his lower back and legs, and then he dug a thumb into the knot in his left calf, working it. ‘Okay,’ he told himself. ‘Okay.’

Hanley’s forehead furrowed, deep lines between the brows just like William’s. He grabbed William’s ankle-foot orthosis from the bag and tossed it onto the bed. The flesh-colored plastic brace, with its footlike base and high shin strap, looked anachronistic, something out of the polio-scare fifties. During bouts William wore it at night to stretch his left Achilles tendon.

William stared at it with enmity.

Hanley said, ‘Need help with your pants?’

‘No,’ William said bitterly.

Hanley nodded and headed for the door. When he got there, William said, quietly,‘Yes.’

Hanley came back, helped William out of his clothes, and got the orthosis strapped on.

William said, ‘Put the phone near. Boss Man’s callin’ back.’

Hanley set the phone on the mattress beside William, then pulled the sheets over him and turned out the light.

William listened to his brother walk into the room next door. He heard the shower start, the pipes humming in the wall. He felt a cramp start in the arch of his left foot, but his back was too tight for him to lean forward and fight the orthosis off. The tightness spread until he was corkscrewed in the sheets, his back arched so only his shoulder blades and right hip were touching the mattress. Sweat dotted his face. He waited, prayed, waited. Finally the shower turned off.

Using all the strength he could muster, he dragged a fist through the sheets and banged on the wall above his headboard. His eyes squeezed shut, he heard Hanley knocking around his room, tugging on clothes, then the sound of running, and – finally – Hanley barged through the door.

His little brother rushed over, tugged off the sheets, and pulled William’s limbs this way and that, stretching out the cramps, massaging away gnarls. William grimaced and grunted, releasing the pain with short bursts of breath.

Hanley drew a bath, poured in epsom salts, and carried William over, naked as a baby. He settled into the steaming water with a cry of relief. And then he was floating, weightless, the muscles letting go. In water he was just like everyone else. Hanley sat on the toilet, flicking dirt from under his nails with their father’s folding lock-back hunting knife, the one thing he’d left to either of them.

William said, ‘I wonder sometimes if this isn’t heaven. And then I remember, it’s just how everyone else feels all the time.’

The bedsheets muffled the cell phone’s ring in the other room.

‘Fetch it for me,’ William said.

Hanley retrieved the phone, and William flipped it open, warm water sloshing around his neck and shoulders. ‘Yes, sir?’

‘The Mustang’s registered to a Shepherd White. He was in a foster home in the San Fernando Valley from late 1981 to 1993. Another boy lived there during that time, named Mike Doe. Doe popped up in the system as a four-year-old with little memory and no records, abandoned by his father. Guess when?’

William said, ‘October 1980.’

‘He’s our missing person.’

In the excited silence, William could sense, after all these years, what this meant to Boss Man. The Job.

But it didn’t take him long to get down to business. ‘Hanley goes point on this. The family knows your face and Dodge’s. You two can play janitor afterward.’ He hung up.

William shut the phone, set it on the edge of the tub, and settled back into the warmth, inhaling the saline vapor from the epsom bath. His muscles felt relaxed, limber, ready.

Hanley was leaning forward, eyes bulging with excitement. ‘Well?’

William said, ‘We’re green-lit.’